Tradition, Innovation, and Agency in a City of God: The Philadelphia Cité de Dieu and Early Fifteenth-Century Parisian Manuscript Culture

Abstract

In 1371, Raoul de Presles, a lawyer associated with the French royal court, translated the twenty-two books of St. Augustine’s City of God into French and appended additional commentary to each chapter. Raoul's preface, addressed to King Charles V, explains that Augustine's treatise testifies to the saint's teaching, affirmation, and demonstration of Christian doctrine in the face of a heretical enemy. Around 1405–06, thirty years after Raoul's initial translation and at a time of extraordinary political intrigue in Paris, an unusual version of the Cité de Dieu (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, 1945-65-1) entered the collection of John of Berry, Charles V's brother and uncle to King Charles VI. This richly illuminated, partial copy of Augustine's text is unique among the ninteen surviving Cité de Dieu manuscripts completed between 1375 and 1420. PMA, 1945-65-1 contains only the first five books of Raoul's translation, resulting in a text that places emphasis on Augustine's study of Roman history and Raoul's generous expansions upon these histories. In addition, seven unique textual passages, written by an unknown author, appear in Books 1–2 of the codex, enlarging and amplifying Raoul's historical commentaries. Finally, the manuscript contains an expanded and distinctive illustrative cycle of sixty-five miniatures painted by the Orosius Master illuminators. Sixty-two illuminations appear in Books 1–2, highlighting historical episodes featured in the text, and three mark the openings of Books 3-5. While Raoul's prologue characterizes the text of Augustine's work as actively witnessing the bishop's pastoral mission, this dissertation suggests that PMA, 1945-65-1, a physical object created by a collective of artists and artisans under the direction of a book producer or libraire, testifies to a marked change in the reception and use of Augustine's City of God in early fifteenth-century France. An original product of the collaboration between scribes, illuminators, decorators, and libraire, PMA, 1945-65-1 is as an active mediator of text in the contemporary manuscript tradition of Augustine. Even more importantly, this codex demonstrates the potential power of visual imagery as an instrument of transformation, prompting new horizons of expectations for the Cité de Dieu. This dissertation demonstrates this flexibility by placing PMA, 1945-65-1 within the textual and visual traditions of Augustine's City of God and in the codex's larger historical setting. This intertwined analysis reveals how decisions made in the manufacture of PMA, 1945-65-1 converted Augustine's religious treatise into a timely collection of Roman historical narratives and exemplars that spoke directly to the French court at a politically fraught moment of history.